The Buntings at Blyth

Me and my dad decided to go and look for the Iceland gull in Blyth Harbour. We knew that it hung around with the great black-backed gulls so we went to see them. After a good search through lots of great black-backed gulls, cormorants and eider ducks we decided there was no Iceland gull. We were on our way to the car to go to Whitley Bay golf course to try and find the Mediterranean Gull, when we asked someone what they had seen and they said the snow bunting was on the post and we looked on the little pier and it was sitting there. I got a photo but not a very good one. Then it flew and joined it's partner and I got some photos then. Great Black-Backed Gull Eider DuckSnow Bunting

7-12-08 Back to Cresswell

A nice day for it... but very cold! After reading about the Merlin and the bittern at Cresswell, I decided to go and look for them again. When we got there, we noticed that the little pond was frozen and there was a pied wagtail on it. We hoped that Cresswell wasn't frozen. Luckily it wasn't and we scanned the water for any rare species. Sad to see, no waders there execpt 10 sanderling and 1 curlew. There was 2 Red-Breasted Mergansers to the left of the hide and in the middle there was some ducks and there was 10 teal, 10 mallard, 2 wigeon, 2 shoveler and 1 goldeneye. After that nothing of major interest for a while... that was until, I noticed a big brown bird flying in and I asked my dad if it was the bittern and sure enough it was but it flew in too quick for a photo and went in the reeds. Unfortunately, there was no Merlin so after an hour we left. On our way back to the car we saw the famous Cresswell barn owl! I got some shots of it and we left for back home. On the whole, a good day birding!

Barn Owl Curlew calling

Photo Competitions

I entered 3 competitions: Chronicle Extra Competition, Wetlands Trust Competition and a British Waterways Competition. I found out recently that I had won 2 of them. The Chronicle Extra and the Waterways. My winning photo for the chronicle was a wren which is a the top of my blog. I won a pair of binoculars, a wildlife in Britain book, a toy frog and a trophy for a year. I haven't got a prize for the Waterways one but here is my photo of a mallard duck that won that one.

Wren

Mallard